Every story is worth keeping, before it is lost.

Nobody remembers a whole life in one afternoon. Amanda knows what to ask, leaves room for the things that come back a week later, and writes it all into a life story that still sounds like them.

Start a conversation

From £250 · nothing happens until you are sure

An older woman mid-conversation with a middle-aged woman, sitting together outdoors — A conversation, not an interview

What this actually is

A life-story service, and the same work given away.

Capture & Keep is a UK life-story service and a practical resource, run by Amanda Yaffe-Parker. She is based in Colchester in Essex and works with people and families across the UK.

The rest of this site is the same work, given away. Questions to ask, guides to recording and keeping, and practical advice for anybody doing it themselves.

What Amanda does

Why a year, and not a portrait. The number is the only thing on the page that behaves like the subject: it is specific, it is somebody's, and it stops you. It also sidesteps the problem the live hero has, which is that the photograph is two strangers standing in for a client we do not have a picture of. On the real page the year would be set from the earliest year in the story being sold, or left as a single year that is plainly an example.